[everdumb]

the Doyle estate argues that, while they admittedly lost the copyright to all of the Holmes stories written before 1923—i.e., most of them—into the public domain back in 2014, it’s only in the latter stories that they still have the rights to that Doyle began to give Holmes recognizable human emotions. (A reaction, they argue, to Doyle wrestling with his grief over the loved ones he lost during World War I.) Said feelings—like, say, being worried about his (non-canonical) sister Enola—are thus a new element Doyle only introduced in those later stories, which makes them trademarked elements still controlled by the family

The fact that nonsense like this legally credible in one of those things where I feel the need to scream but do not have a legal mouth to scream with. It's strange how these rich people legacy estates can seem like such parasites. Looking forward to the Rowling estate attacking all of fantasy in the centuries to come.